2015 Porsche 918 Spyder Album

The hybrid supercar develops nearly 900 hp from a 4.6-liter V-8 gasoline engine and two electric motors. They catapult the machine—initially in silence, until the V-8 kicks in—to speeds wholly inappropriate for public roads. This is the rarest, fastest, quickest, and most groundbreaking production Porsche ever! But extreme performance is not the car’s only attribute. In fact, the 918 Spyder is docile at dawdling speeds, and it is as comfortable as any sports car. It was chosen by Robb Report’s 2015 Car of the Year! and for a good reason.

To provide the initial spark and to reignite the old sports car dream. The 918 Spyder represents an entirely new look at the supercar. It heralds the future of the sports car and you can be there at the start.

Flush as we are with nutty performance cars at the moment, we should remember that automobiles as quick as the Porsche 918 don’t come along too often. In 2008, the quickest (and fastest) production car we had ever tested was the Bugatti Veyron 16.4. It could hit 60 mph in 2.5 seconds and burn the quarter-mile in 10.1 ticks. The Porsche 918 crushes the original million-dollar car with a 2.2-second sprint to 60 mph and a 9.8-second quarter-mile time. To put that in perspective, 0.3 second is about how long it takes you to blink. As acceleration times shrink, their deltas become increasingly larger percentage gains, so the 918’s third-of-a-second edge over the Veyron represents an astounding achievement.

Launch control takes the guesswork out of testing the 918. Two electric motors with a combined 285 horsepower work in concert with the flat-crank, 608-hp 4.6-liter V-8. By routing torque—as much as 830 pound-feet—to all four wheels, the 918 maximizes traction. If we had a little more testing room, we might have been able to hit 200 mph and dethrone the Veyron’s 25.5-second zero-to-200-mph time. (It’s also the only car for which we have that stat.) But even Porsche admits that the Veyron accelerates harder at higher speed.

There is very little wheelspin during the 918 launch. But assuming for a moment that there is no at-launch wheelspin whatsoever, the 918 jumps to 16 mph after just one wheel rotation, or in about seven feet. Its massive 325/30ZR-21 Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 rear tires ($729 apiece) stand nearly 29 inches tall, almost two inches taller than a 911 Turbo S’s rear rubber. Increasing the overall diameter of a tire increases the area of the contact patch. That’s why Top Fuel dragsters’ tires are engineered to expand in response to inertial forces at launch. Widening the tires helps to increase the lateral limit.